Why are my backups coming out pixelated??

[jbenj01]

Lately, my backups have come out pixelated.. At first, I thought the original DVD's were just too large to use one-click solutions BUT..

I just tried backing up my Season 1, Disc 4 of Sopranos, which is only 5.14G, and the end result came out badly pixelated. I used DVD2One initially, then DVDShrink, then finally IC8.. all came out pretty bad. I was very surprised since the original DVD was only 5.14G.. ???

Is there something possibly wrong with my system that is causing this?? Please advise. Thanks.

[DoubleShadowIce]

Is this before after burning? If after, I think it's your media. The ones I had backed up on Memorex DVD+Rs started doing what you mentioned and even worse, my DVD would crash and stop play!

[dafreak]

^^^^^

my memorex disks were doing that as well, but only when i burned at 4x.

They seem to work a lot better when i burn at 2x.



ugh...can't wait till my riteks come in the mail. Tired of using crap media.




@jbenj01
well, the quality of the movie is not going to be perfect, especially when you're trying to cram 5.1 gigs of material onto a 4.7 gig (4474 meg) disk.

if you don't like the quality of the backup, try reauthoring, to a couple episodes per disk.

[jbenj01]

DoubleShadowIce and dafreak,

This is after burning.. I understand there will be some deterioration, but 5.14g to 4.37g is not a lot of compression, I don't think.. Compressing original video down to 85% of original size.. shouldn't be a noticeable difference, as I've compressed down to 70% and even lower sometimes with acceptable video quality..

As for the culprit being media, I've tried a couple--generic Matrix and Verbatim.. bad video quality with both.. ?? Don't get it.. Guess I'll have to format and do fresh re-install of WinXP

[bugster]

Don't get it.. Guess I'll have to format and do fresh re-install of WinXP

That is very unlikley to help. A waste of time IMHO.

I agree with the other posters, poor media. Remember, brand name means nothing.

[FT Shark]

Play the "Shrinked" vob's on your computer player. If there is pixelation then it is the encoders fault. If it only does this after burning, then is more than likely your media. 10:1 you are using a crap brand like Princo. If this is the case try a better brand like Ritek. I bought a bunch of crap disks and did I pay the price. I switched to Ritek after reading the reviews in this forum.

[northcat_8]

I just want to repeat what Shark said.

Play the DVD from the folder on your PC or Download Daemon Tools and play the DVD from the ISO and check the video quality before you burn it.

This isolates the issues. If it's ok on the PC you are left with only 2 things to be wrong...bad burn or bad media.

It has been my experience that your computer's speed as alot to do with the quality of video. A bunch of background programs or doing other things on your PC will sometimes have a negative effect on your video quality.

Reformatting you HD is not only insanity but also un-necessary. I have never had a problem where I needed to reformat and re-install. Work with it figure it out...that's how you learn, but I guess just wiping the slate clean and starting over is the way of our current society.

[bugster]

It has been my experience that your computer's speed as alot to do with the quality of video. A bunch of background programs or doing other things on your PC will sometimes have a negative effect on your video quality.

You do mean video playback don't you?

Background programs/processor speed etc can not have any effect when encoding/transcoding video.

[jbenj01]

Yes, I did playback the transcoded video before burning on my pc using PowerDVD, and yes, I did notice the pixelation even on my pc.. So in some cases, I did not even attempt to burn and just scrapped the project.
On the 5.14G disc, I even stripped 2 of 3 audio streams and it still came out very bad.

So that's why I'm thinking it is not the media but something else on my system that is "interfering" with transcoding/re-encoding.. The odd thing is that this only started happening ~1wk ago when I first started backing up my Sopranos DVD's.. I'm trying to back-track and see what I might have done to cause this.. AND.. lately, my pc has been crashing without warning, i.e., blue screens with 'memory dump'.. (that's why I thought of fresh re-install..)

Just another point that I found odd--> in all my attempts, the transcoded video would give me an unusually high amount of reds and much 'grain' in the picture (along with the pixelation).. If that means anything.. ??

[Phil Thomas]

Some TV Series DVD's are poor quality to start off with and compressing them further, sometimes tips them over the edge.

Not sure about Sopranos, but I have had similar problems in the past with TV stuff. It's all down to the budget the producer had and how much attention was given to quality at the studio.
Is this only happening with the Sopranos disk ? .... i.e. have you tried an ordinary movie and got the same ?

IMO it's unlikely to be your media that's causing pixellation. If it was a media issue, it would more likely be giving you jerky playback/freezes, with pixellisation only when these occur.

Try right clicking, whilst the movie is playing in PowerDVD and click on Show Information. The second line of the display will tell you the bitrate in mbps if this is very low (i.e. 2-4) then it's most likely the original quality coupled with compression that's the problem.
The only way around this would be to forget the 1 click/quick methods and go for CCE to re-encode.